President’s message: Transparency in the race to net zero

By Tom Zaban, president at Reliable Controls

The UN Climate Change Conference (COP 29) will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan, this November, and one of the focus items in the lead-up to the event is to achieve a transparent and inclusive process for countries to consistently report their climate change progress. The goal of consistent and complete reporting is not simple.

The Paris Agreement mandates that all signatory countries update their nationally determined contributions every 5 years, but half of developing nations are still struggling to quantify their greenhouse gas inventories, never mind track and report changes and find monies to fund climate action.

In this context, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) introduced a biennial transparency report requirement to help all countries better understand their greenhouse gas inventories and report their activities consistently, so they can meaningfully contribute to the UNFCCC’s Enhanced Transparency Framework. The first report is due December 31, 2024, and to kickstart the effort, a series of regional online workshops were held in April this year. Approximately 100 experts from over 50 countries joined supporting organizations to discuss best practices for preparing and submitting biennial transparency reports. In addition, the incoming COP 29 presidency hosted a two-day workshop on May 13–14, 2024, to help educate countries on completing and submitting their reports. A second workshop is scheduled for June 4.

Data from biennial transparency reports will help the UN assess countries’ actions to deliver their nationally determined contributions and to ensure funding where needed. On aggregate, the reports will provide a meaningful, trustworthy snapshot of global climate action that will inform the next round of nationally determined contributions. Developed-country party members such as Belgium, Canada, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and the United States are providing funding, tools, and templates to help developing nations build the capacity to cope with climate change and to independently identify, quantify, and track their greenhouse gas inventories and emissions. These activities will also aid in achieving a valid global stocktake of the world’s emissions and the capacity to track changes over time.

As of September 25, 2023, the date of the last NDC synthesis report, which analyzed the historical and projected greenhouse emissions of 195 parties to the Paris Agreement, the projected global emissions indicate we might reach peak emissions prior to 2030 and fall within a range of 48.3 to 54.8 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030, excluding land use, land use change, and forestry. This range is a positive indication we are heading in the right direction and an improvement from the initial range forecast by the intended nationally determined contributions submitted on April 4, 2016 (Figure 1).

Figure 1:Projected range and progression of emission levels according to nationally determined contributions. (Source: UNFCCC)

Transparency in climate change reporting will build trust and motivation in our race to net zero. In the built environment, Reliable Controls and our 200+ factory-certified Authorized Dealers around the world are here to help you with your greenhouse gas measurement, verification, and reporting.

To learn more, find an Authorized Dealer near you today.